Gauge:
The pattern says to use two strands of “red heart designer sport” yarn held together. On Ravelry it lists this as an 8 ply. But it sounds like it’s actually a sport weight (i.e 5 ply?). I mean it’s in the name and everything, lol.

Anyway, I trusted Ravelry so I’d bought dk weight to work with, and holding it stranded together comes out at a larger gauge.
I probably should have gone with 5 ply or, 1 strand of 10 ply. Oh well, I’m just going to make it at a bigger gauge and see what comes out. No big deal right? Eep!!

Notes:
I noticed an ugly seam where the rounds are joined with a slip stitch into a chain. Ick! I searched in the ravelry notes and found someone else’s way of doing it -HandfordKel’s notes. Going to give it a try!
See my comparison pics- the first one is the ugly seam, the 2nd is the improved one.

You basically do this:
-Instead of chaining three at the start of a round, chain two. Do not count the chain two as a double crochet.
-Continue the rest of the round as normal. When you get to the end, do an extra double crochet into the previous round’s slip stitch.
-Join the round with a slip stitch to the first double crochet, NOT the chain.

-When I got to the sc rounds, I did not sc in the join, I just sc’d in the first sc. Hope this makes sense!
I did however sc in the join in the rows where it said to do two in the join. However I just did one of course. As always, I was doing my final sc in the slip stitch at the end of the round.

If you do all these things you will maintain the correct stitch count and have a more attractive join! :)

Mods
-I left off row 6 of the sc rows, as I felt the hat was going to be long enough.
-I wanted the flower smaller, so I used one strand of the DK, with a 5mm hook. I finished off after round 5.
-Looks like the chunkier yarn I used worked out fine! Maybe I have a big head, lol!